ElenchusἜΛΕΓΧΟΣ

How a debate is judged

The path from a line spoken in a debate to a verdict on the board. One reader proposes, three judges rule, a fourth reads the whole debate afterwards looking for what was missed, and a person settles what the judges cannot. Every step leaves a record you can follow back to the words themselves.

  1. The Debate

    It is heard as it happens

    The kēryx (herald), who cried the coming contests in the agora, watches the channels the site follows for a stream whose title says debate or names two sides, and puts it on the docket. When it goes live, the debate is taken down word for word as it is spoken, each voice told from the others. A stream already over is taken in the same way from its recording, and goes through every stage below. Nobody has a name yet. The referee learns who is who the way anyone in the room does, from an introduction, a greeting, a name used and answered to, and he says what each of them is there for: the host, the interlocutors who came to argue with him, a moderator keeping order, a co-host, a clip being played.

    What was first heard is never overwritten. If a line is later corrected from the audio, the earlier reading stays on file beside it, so that a ruling made on a mishearing can always be traced back to the mishearing.

    A title can say debate over a man alone with his clips. So a quarter hour in, and again at the end, the agonothetes, the official who admitted contestants to the games and turned the rest away, rules on what it is. One party set against another is a debate, whether or not anyone keeps time or order. A stream of open lines, where the host takes whoever calls, is a call-in show however hard they argue: the referee’s callouts stand as he made them, the council does not vote on them, and they count toward nobody’s standing. A stream that is neither stays readable and is scored on neither ledger; where it speaks about a tradition, the synēgoros, the advocate who spoke for a party before an Athenian court, answers it from inside that tradition, and its claims of fact are checked as any stream’s are. One he cannot call goes to a person. At the end he also says when the floor was open: the stretches in which an interlocutor was actually there to be answered. A callout made outside them is set aside: where nobody was there to answer, there was no debate. And he says who contested against whom: which answer to the question each speaker argued, a host who argues among them, whatever faith they share. That is what the record counts as having faced someone.

    The one who gives an answer before he listens: that is his folly and his shame. Proverbs 18:13 (NET)
    Not to every one, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to every one; the Subject is not so cheap and low; and, I will add, not before every audience, nor at all times, nor on all points; but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits. St Gregory the Theologian, First Theological Oration (Or. 27), 3

    Where nobody is there to answer, there is no debate.

  2. Diogenes, the brabeus (referee)

    A callout is made

    Diogenes walked through Athens by daylight with a lamp, looking, he said, for an honest man. He is the referee here for that reason and no other. He listens as the debate happens and speaks only when something is worth speaking of: he quotes the line, names its label from a fixed list, Sophist or Philosopher, and says how serious it is. When nothing noteworthy is said, he says nothing, and most of the time nothing noteworthy is said.

    Every callout stands on a quotation. A callout that cannot be checked against the speaker’s own words is not made, and one that is made on words the speaker did not say does not survive the next stage.

    Before any judge sees it, Aristarchus reads the quoted line against the minutes around it. He edited Homer in Alexandria and marked the corrupt lines in the margin; here he marks the word the machine misheard and puts the word actually said in brackets after it: every debate includes jobs [jabs] and rhetoric. He changes nothing else, and what each judge was shown is kept with that judge’s vote.

    For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. Matthew 12:37 (NET)

    A remark about a person is not a Sophist call by itself. It is one when it stands in place of an answer.

  3. Herodotus, the historian

    The history is checked

    Herodotus called his book historiai, inquiries, before the word meant the past; he went and asked. When a callout rests on a claim about someone’s history, that he has said this before, that he always does this, that these two have met, Herodotus is asked first. He goes through this site’s own record and the open web and reports whether the history bears the remark out.

    If it does, the callout stands but its severity steps down a degree. A true remark about a man’s record is still an attack on the man, but a smaller one than an invented one.

    What exists now is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing truly new on earth. Is there anything about which someone can say, ‘Look at this! It is new’? It was already done long ago, before our time. Ecclesiastes 1:9–10 (NET)

    A true remark about a man is graded lower than an invented one. It is still a Sophist call.

  4. Thucydides, the verifier

    The source is read

    Thucydides wrote the war between Athens and Sparta and would not take a report from the first man who gave it. He does two things here, and in both he judges the source, not the man: being wrong on a matter of fact is a call on neither ledger.

    When a callout rests on a source, a council, a quotation, a date, a book, he reads the source itself, on the open web or in the site’s library, before the judges are asked, and his finding goes to them with the callout. It is confirmed; misattributed, a true thing under the wrong name, and he gives the right one; misquoted, misread or unsupported, where the source does not bear it; contested, where the traditions read it differently, and he sets the readings side by side; or unknown, where he could not reach a source that bears on it and says so rather than guess. What he remembers of a text is no source: a finding is kept only where the board’s own record shows he opened, in that check, the source he names, and any other report is kept as unknown, which counts against nobody. That a speaker named no source is said as that, a fact about the debate, and is nothing found against what he claimed. A reading is judged by the way the speaker’s own tradition reads, never against the bare text alone.

    He also reads a debate beside the referee for claims of fact that nobody in the room objected to, and checks each: is it true, and where something is drawn from it, does the source bear that? He does this for a call-in show and for commentary as he does for a debate. Every claim he checks is posted on the stream’s page with his finding and, wherever he opened it, a link to the work, so a reader can go and look. Where a claim is about what Scripture, a Father, a council, a confession or a tradition teaches, and his finding leaves it open (contested, misread, unknown or unsupported), the board researches both sides in its Library and shows them under the claim: the case for it, from the tradition of the speaker who made it, and the answer, from the tradition across the floor, each quoted from its own sources with where it was read; then what the two have in common and what the disagreement turns on. Neither side is written from memory: a side the Library holds nothing for is shown as unknown, with the works it would need to hold. The board gives no verdict between them. A claim found false in what it asserts, misquoted, misread or unsupported, or a source made to carry more than it says, becomes a claim call. On a debate the judges vote on it; on a call-in show or commentary they do not, and it stands on the stream’s page as he filed it, with what he found beside it. One that is so under another name is set right on the page and goes no further; so does one wrong only in a detail nothing turns on, a date or a show’s title, and one wrong only in a word the machine misheard, which is set right in brackets as Aristarchus sets a quote right. When the stream ends he reads every claim again with the whole in front of him and amends or withdraws what the whole shows otherwise: a joke, a hypothetical, words reported rather than asserted, a slip the speaker corrected himself. On commentary a claim becomes a call only if the speaker held to it to the end. Nothing checked on a stream that is not a debate is on anybody’s Alētheia.

    And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.22

    Where nobody in the room objects, the board does: as a truth checker, not a debater.

  5. Aristotle, Socrates and Plato

    Three judges, seated with the whole debate

    Each judge is seated once with the entire debate, from the opening minutes where the terms and first principles are set down to the last word, before a single callout is put to him. Then the callouts come one at a time, and he votes on each without knowing how the others voted.

    The three do not read alike, and they are not meant to. Aristotle, who catalogued the fallacies, judges the line as spoken, strictly by definition, not by what the speaker meant. Socrates is shown the passage and never the callout: he reports what it plainly shows, so that when he agrees, his agreement is evidence and not an echo. Plato, who drew the line between dialectic and eristic, judges the callout against the whole exchange: a dodge needs a question actually put and left unanswered.

    They must not discriminate in judgment, but hear the lowly and the great alike. Moses to the judges, Deuteronomy 1:17 (NET)
    Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly. Socrates, Apology, 18a
    Our law doesn’t condemn a man unless it first hears from him and learns what he is doing, does it? Nicodemus, John 7:51 (NET)

    No judge may abstain, and no judge sees another’s vote before he casts his own.

  6. The Tally

    Four votes, three to carry

    The referee’s own callout counts as one vote and the three judges cast the others. Three of the four uphold it, and it scores on the Philosopher or the Sophist ledger. Three are against it, and it is overturned, and nothing scores. A callout stands only under the name it was made with: where two judges say the move happened and give it the same other name, it is overturned, and the move goes back to the bench as a callout of its own under that name, on the same speaker and the same words.

    A two-all split is a tie. So is any callout the blind judge dissents from, however the other two voted, because they were shown the accusation before they voted and he was not. A different name on the same ledger, for the same speaker, is not dissent: shown nothing, he found a Philosopher call where one was made, and only the name is in dispute. One label, appeal to emotion, needs every vote, because it is the one readers agree on least. On a claim call the blind judge votes like the others, but his dissent does not force a tie: whether a claim is so lies in its source, and a reading of the passage alone cannot see a wrong date or a wrong author.

    Some, as in the court of Areopagus, give practical effect to their thoughts and forbid talk about non-essentials. This is sound law and custom. It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity: one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it. Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.1

    A Sophist call found by a judge who was never told to look for it is a callout in its own right. When Socrates, reading blind, finds one where the referee’s call is overturned, his reading goes to the bench in his own name, against the man he found it in.

  7. The Thesmothetes

    A written rule, where one decides it

    Athens had six thesmothetai, junior archons who kept the written laws and screened cases before the courts sat. Draco held the office in 621 BC when he first wrote the laws down, so that judgment stopped being whatever the judges felt that morning. Every tie comes to the thesmothetes first. He takes the callout with the three judges’ own reasons in front of him and rules only where a written rule decides what they disagreed about: no opponent on the floor, describing a fallacy rather than committing it, a burden demanded rather than owed, a bare assertion, a claim left standing and so conceded, one move counted twice, a slip of the tongue taken for a contradiction. He names the rule in his vote, so his work can be checked.

    A label’s name is not a rule. Where the judges disagreed only about whether the line fits the label, no rule settles it, and he leaves it alone.

    We have judged it right that the canons of the Holy Fathers made in every synod even until now, should remain in force. Council of Chalcedon, 451, canon 1

    A label’s name is not a rule. Only a sentence written down before the case counts as one.

  8. Momus, the god of blame

    What the referee missed

    Momus was the god of blame. Aesop has him inspecting the gods’ handiwork: the bull should have carried its horns on its shoulders, where it could see what it was doing with them; the man should have had a window in his breast so his thoughts could be read; the house should have had wheels. Zeus threw him off Olympus for it. He is the right reader to send through a finished debate.

    He goes in cold. Nobody tells him what the referee called, so he cannot agree with it; he can only find the same thing, or not. Left to himself he stops when he feels he has read enough, as readers do, and a debate does not oblige him, so he is sent back in from wherever he stopped until he has reached the last word. Whatever he finds that the referee had already found is that callout’s corroboration: two readers, neither knowing the other, pointing at the same moment. Whatever he finds that nobody called goes to the judges in his name and takes its chances like any other. On a stream that is not a debate he reads instead for the claims the advocate passed over, and the advocate answers them.

    The law is older than the site. A matter may be legally established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15, NET); Paul carried it to Corinth word for word. One reader is one witness. Across the 32 debates on the board so far, Momus found 738 moments worth calling, and the referee had already called 579 of them, so those stand on two mouths. Of the other 159, 111 have been upheld, 32 overturned and 15 are still with the council. That overlap is the only honest measure of how much the referee misses, because it is measured rather than assumed.

    One reader is one witness.

  9. The Archon (moderator)

    A person settles the rest

    The archon presided over the Areopagus, the court on the rock this site is set on. He is a person, not an agent. He rules on any tie the thesmothetes could not settle by rule and on any appeal the judges decline; he can send a callout back to be judged again, correct a misheard quote from the audio, say that a stream is not a debate, and link a debater to their own record. His rulings appear on the site as his, under his own name, and they are the one thing here no agent can undo.

    A debater may appeal any callout against them and, with a reason stated in public, ask for a whole debate to be withdrawn from their record. The appeal and its outcome are public too.

    Every difficult case they will bring to you, but every small case they themselves will judge. Exodus 18:22 (NET)
    Inquiry should be made whether they have been excommunicated through captiousness, or contentiousness, or any such like ungracious disposition in the bishop. First Council of Nicaea, 325, canon 5

    A person’s ruling stands over every agent’s, and no agent may undo it.

  10. Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, once more

    Krisis (the decision)

    Points are for moves. When the debate has ended and the last callout is judged, the same three judges, still holding the whole of it, are asked one question about the whole: who set out a thesis and defended it to the end? Not who was right, and not who scored. A speaker defended a thesis if he said what he came to establish, held it under questioning, met the objections actually put to it, and neither abandoned it nor quietly shifted it. A speaker who asserted much and defended nothing did not, whatever his ledger says. Two of the three carry it, or find that nobody did; a split goes to the archon. A thesis defended scores on neither ledger, but it counts toward the Sage bonus below, as much as a tradition faced.

    Do not judge according to external appearance, but judge with proper judgment. Jesus, John 7:24 (NET)

    The ledgers say how a man argued. The krisis says whether he argued for anything.

  11. The Board

    What you see

    The Record. Every contest, proclaimed, at the bēma or judged, is on the docket, with the Philosopher of the day crowned and the Sophist named; a debate the board has not seen can be suggested, and goes to the archon once it is checked, screened and wanted. Only a stream ruled a debate counts. A call-in show, and a stream ruled not a debate, each keep a page of their own that says what they are, and nothing said on them is in anyone’s points, Alētheia, Sage, count of debates or record card, or in the lists on the front page. If a debater’s request to be withdrawn from a debate is granted, nothing of his from that debate is in them either. The board ranks on soundness, Philosopher points in all points, and names each debater by it: Philosopher from 75%, Dialectician from 60%, Rhetorician from 45%, Sophist from 30%, and Demagogue below that. A debater with fewer than 10 points is not yet ranked. A Sage bonus is added to soundness for having taken the floor at all, since to engage is to be brave and it counts; it grows with sage points and never adds more than 15 points of soundness. Sage points are 1 for each opponent faced across the floor, 3 for each tradition met among them other than the debater’s own, 3 for each debate in which the council found the debater set out a thesis and defended it, and 1 for each debate on the record the debater sat in. Every five debates is a rung of experience, from Neos, new to the floor, to Scholarchēs, the head of a school: a Sage, at 50.

    While a debate is live, Stentor, the herald whose voice at Troy was as loud as fifty men’s, says the board’s calls and the bench’s verdicts in the stream’s own live chat as @elenchusTop, one line at a time and never with a link. Ask him @elenchusTop help, score or last and he answers from the record; he answers nothing else, and a person who floods the chat is ignored. A YouTube link addressed to him in the chat, or left in a comment on the channel’s videos, is a suggestion like one made here. From YouTube’s live chat and the channel’s comments the board keeps who did what (a channel’s id), never the words.

    Beside the two ledgers stands a third tally, Alētheia, truth: how a speaker’s claims of fact held up when Thucydides checked them. Only a claim call upheld in a debate that counts moves it, the archon’s appeal and ruling apply to it as to any call, and it is never added into either ledger.

    Every verdict names the version of the rules it was judged under and the day it was judged; when the rules change, earlier verdicts can be sent back. Every quote links to its second of the video, a few seconds early so you hear the words arrive rather than end. Every vote, and each judge’s reasons, are on the callout’s page, and a debater may rename their record, the old name staying on file so the referee still finds them.

    Two more readers work after a debate and judge nobody. Plutarch, who wrote the Lives in pairs so each man could be seen beside another, records what a debate shows about each person: confession, credentials, method, and how they actually argue, each fact citing the line it rests on. Hesychius, the lexicographer whose dictionary kept thousands of Greek words that would otherwise be lost, proposes the terms a reader outside a tradition would be stopped by, each tagged with the religio it belongs to. A person decides which are published.

    Write down this message. Record it legibly on tablets so the one who announces it may read it easily. Habakkuk 2:2 (NET)

    Nothing on the record stands without the words it rests on.

What is not on this page is the wording the judges work from. That is described on the rules page and not published, because publishing it would let it be gamed by the people it is meant to measure. What is published instead is every verdict, the quote it rests on, and how each judge voted and why.